


Time Truants

by Kalypso



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2012-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:07:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalypso/pseuds/Kalypso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who really decided it was time to leave Gallifrey?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Truants

**Author's Note:**

> This was loosely inspired by a ficlet from [AstroGirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl), _Home Is the Place That's There for You to Leave_ , which sadly doesn't seem to be on AO3.

"Why do I have to do tribophysics?"

"Why? Why, Susan? Well... it would be very useful, you know, if you found two dimensions rubbing against one another..."

"I'd like it if we could _see_ that! But we never do anything real, they just teach us boring rules!"

"Well, child, sometimes we have to do things we don't really want to. What would happen if I didn't go into the Academy tomorrow to lecture on the origins of time travel, hmmm?"

"I don't know, what?"

He didn't know, either. He supposed they would find someone else. Maybe someone who would enjoy the teaching, the way he had done a few decades ago. Though it wasn't just the repetition that was making time drag; there was a fashionable cynicism among his current students which made it difficult to connect with them. Maybe if he could teach fresher minds, youngsters like Susan, who were still capable of wonder and excitement given the chance...

"Grandfather?"

"Yes?"

"What would happen if you didn't do your lecture?"

"Er... not very much, I suppose."

"Then don't! Let's go somewhere!"

"Where?"

"Anywhere! We could take a TARDIS..."

She'd come up with that acronym when he'd taken her to the museum a few weeks ago, and he'd started to accept it. But he couldn't accept what she seemed to be suggesting.

"No, no, wait a minute, child, we couldn't possibly _steal_ a, a TARDIS..."

"Of course not, we'd just _borrow_ her! We could take that TARDIS we saw in the museum, nobody wants her any more, and she's bored, I could tell, it was like she was whispering to me."

A fanciful idea, like Susan's habit of assigning gender to the ships. And a crazy idea, to take a seven-year-old on a journey to face unknown dangers.

But was she any safer here, at home on Gallifrey? Her eighth birthday was approaching, and with it the ordeal he dreaded: the moment when she was taken to look into the Time Vortex. It was madness to inflict that on an eight-year-old, maybe on an eighty-year-old too. He had seen the damage it could do. Wasn't it his duty to protect her?

She tugged his sleeve. "Come on, Grandfather, let's do it. We can get home before we leave - put the TARDIS back before anyone notices. You can still give your lecture, and it'll be even better because you'll - we'll _both_ have learned so much!"

"Well, yes, that's probably true." He smiled at her, beginning to share her excitement as he made up his mind.

Why shouldn't the child have the adventures he'd been missing?


End file.
